Another year is done and dusted, and for many, it can be a fun time to look back on what you played on the games you spent the most time with (unless you’re an Xbox fan). It can also be interesting to see exactly which games dominated our collective free time over the course of 2025, and to do that, Steam has once again offered up an interesting list of the most-played titles throughout 2025.
Unsurprisingly, it’s littered with big hitters like Counter Strike and Marvel Rivals, and a series of other multiplayer games that dominate your life when you’re going through those phases. However, one of the more interesting aspects of this list is that only two of the games out of the 12 there were actually released in 2025.
Steam’s Most Played Games This Year Only Includes Two 2025 Releases
We know that people are spending less on new games at the moment, which was made pretty evident after Steam Replay revealed that only 14 percent of the total playtime across the entirety of Steam in 2025 was spent on games that launched this year. Of the 12 most-played games this year, Peak and Repo are this year’s sole representation, with nary an Arc Raiders, Hollow Knight: Silksong, or Monster Hunter Wilds in sight. In fact, there are more games on the list that are over a decade old.
Almost Half Of This Year’s Top-Performing Steam Games Have Come From Double-A Or Indie Studios
The times are changing.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, and even Left 4 Dead 2 were all played more than the vast majority of 2025’s offerings, which makes sense due to just how popular they have been for such a long time. It’s possible that games such as Arc Raiders may have made an appearance if they’d had launched earlier in the year, what with them lacking the advantage of not having the full 12 months.
Then again, even when you expand the list of this year’s most-played titles to 24, you still only gain the likes of Schedule 1, Battlefield 6, and Call of Duty, two of which you’d expect to be on the list any year they release. In fact, Call of Duty was in the top 12 in both 2024 and 2023, which strengthens claims that Black Ops 6 has been extremely disappointing in terms of players this year.
Out of all the games that could have represented 2025, it’s interesting to see so-called “friendslop” games like Peak and Repo above everything else, which may point to where the industry is headed. People either want their cheap and fun experiences to play with their friends, or they’re going to stick to the game they’ve always played, and it’ll be interesting to see how the industry adapts to that.
- Released
-
June 16, 2025
- Developer(s)
-
Landcrab
- Publisher(s)
-
Aggro Crab, Landfall
